


Upon the Throne Lies the Heart

by Anonymous



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Duke Ashton Irwin, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, New Year's Eve, Prince Michael Clifford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 07:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17259893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Makes you wonder how hard you would love someone if it were real.





	Upon the Throne Lies the Heart

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” asks Ashton.

And he isn’t looking at Calum as he says it but rather through the window in front of them at the span of the crisp white snowy landscape that shines beneath the pale light of the dying moon. Their reflections are as plain as they would be in a mirror—Ashton with his wild, honey curls and Calum with his jet black hair, two people who couldn’t look less alike if they tried.

Calum hums in his throat. The sound is partly a question and partly a need to fill in the heavy silence before it has a chance to settle uncomfortably between them like so many has before since this whole charade began.  

“How hard you’d love someone if it were real. I mean—just look at you and Michael. You’ve fooled the entire damn country. No, the entire fucking world.”

“Yeah,” says Calum, lowly, mostly to himself.

It is the response Ashton is expecting, after all. Ashton doesn’t need to know the way Calum’s heart twists whenever he thinks about what it might be like to actually be able to love Michael like the whole world thinks he does.

Calum frowns at the thought and watches as a stray snowflake dances through the wind to melt against the glass. This high up, he can see the whole city below them lit up in the street lights. Down there, most people have bunkered down for the night, and those that haven’t are likely celebrating the New Year in the privacy of their homes or in the company of other bar patrons. They have no idea what news tomorrow is going to bring.

Because tomorrow, Calum would be gone. Tomorrow, the whole world would learn the truth—that he and Michael were not lovers.

Only the world wouldn’t know the whole truth. They couldn’t. Or the people’s trust in Michael as their future ruler would hit rock bottom once more, and then what was the point of all of this? Of parading around like Michael and he were the truest of lovers? Holding hands in the Christmas park? Sharing dinner down at the corner café, right in front of the windows for everybody to see? Stumbling underneath mistletoe in the train station and Michael’s lips seeking Calum’s?

Ashton watches Calum out of the corner of his eyes, like he always tends to do, especially of late, and Calum stands stock still underneath the scrutiny. Ashton knows the farce of Calum and Michael’s stunt. He is Michael’s best friend, so of course he does, but he doesn’t need to know how much Calum _aches_ at the thought of returning to the university dorm room he shares with Michael knowing that everything is going to go back to the way it was—back to normal.

Part of him wants to hate Michael for asking the worst of Calum. It wasn’t fair. Calum had been doing a-okay smothering out his growing attraction for the crown prince. He was getting good at lying to himself that he was more than satisfied with being considered one of the crown prince’s best friends and nothing more. He was getting even better at deceiving himself into thinking that he could step aside and watch the crown prince fall in love with the exact person he should: a beautiful woman of noble birth whose childhood didn’t consist of bouncing from family member to family member in the hopes of not starving to death.

But the truth is that he is no closer to falling out of love with Michael than he had been the first moment Calum had met him face-to-face all those months ago at the start of the term.

Maybe Calum should just call it quits now. Maybe he should take that internship at the embassy and jet off and never, ever return. And maybe he should sell his television, forget how to read, and break his mobile phone while he was at it—all to avoid any updates on the perfect life Michael was no doubt going to have with the nameless beautiful woman of noble birth.

“Holy fuck,” says Ashton.

Calum’s gaze snaps to Ashton. His heart pounds like a kick drum in his chest. The look on Ashton’s face—the shock, Ashton’s mouth gaping open and his eyes blown wide—it says enough all by itself.

“You’re in love with him.”

“I am not.”

“You’re _in love_ with Michael.”

Calum snorts. It comes out a little strangled, like the way the first breath does after nearly drowning. Calum thinks it is appropriate, the thought of drowning. He has been drowning in this heartache that was Michael for entirely too long.

“You’re off your rocker, Your Grace. Maybe you did take a snowball too many to the head earlier.”

“Cal.”

But Calum folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head, biting his lips together until his teeth nearly cut into his skin. He doesn’t want to talk about this to Ashton, and he will be damned if Ashton makes him.

But Ashton isn’t so easily deterred.

“Is that why you agreed to this so easily?”

“You should mind your own business,” snaps Calum.

He balls his hands into fists but has to mentally remind himself that Ashton is of much higher status than Calum and it is entirely likely that decking the highest ranking duke of the kingdom would likely result in being thrown in the dungeon. Michael says they don’t do that anymore, throw people down in the dungeon, but Calum doesn’t want to try his luck with punching Ashton right in the middle of the year-end ball.

“But no, it wasn’t,” he says, through gritted teeth instead. “I agreed because I’m a good friend—much better than you’re being to me right now. Please, excuse me, Your Grace. I have had enough of the festivities. I believe I will turn in for the night.”

Then, because Calum has spent the better part of the last four months practically living in Michael’s pocket and has, therefore, picked up a few dramatics, Calum storms off. He doesn’t have to stand there and take whatever sort of lecture Ashton is no doubt going to bestow upon him for the immorality of agreeing to pretend to be Michael’s boyfriend in a farce to improve the kingdom’s opinion of their party-boy heir.

So maybe Calum _had_ had an ulterior motive—that maybe the thought had occurred to him, _however minutely_ , _however quietly_ , when Michael had first come to him with his insane plan of winning the hearts of his people through the kindness that Calum exuded, that if Calum were to agree to pretend to date Michael, then Michael might fall in love with Calum along the way—but who cares? It really doesn’t matter, because, at the end of the day, Michael had only wanted one thing: his people to trust him, to believe in him, and Calum has held up his end of the bargain. He has helped Michael become the golden boy in the eyes of the people.

It was only Calum’s heart that had gotten broken along the way.

And that? Well, that isn’t Michael’s problem, and it isn’t Ashton’s concern, either. It is Calum’s and Calum’s alone—or perhaps it is also Luke’s concern, because mercy knows that Calum is going to need a shoulder to cry on once this is all over, and there is no better shoulder in the whole world than Luke’s.

 

Up in his given room, Calum feels no more tired than he had downstairs, watching it snow with Ashton. But at least here he doesn’t have to worry about Ashton’s calculating looks and prying questions.

Calum misses Luke. He wishes he would have gone home with Luke last night like he had originally planned to do. Spending New Year’s Eve at Luke’s too-full childhood home with all of Luke’s crazy relatives and cheap wine would have to be better than spending it here in the palace feeling sorry for himself.

He changes out of his dress attire, glad to be rid of the stiff, too expensive clothes. He hangs them carefully in the wardrobe from whence they had come. They will be returned to wherever fancy, borrowed dress clothes go after too-poor royal guests borrow them. They are beautiful, all dark blue with silver trim, and they make Calum feel like he is in one of those old-time fairytale movies.

But they also make Calum feel out of place. He doesn’t belong in this world, not with his worn out, tattered jeans and one mismatched three-piece suit from the thrift store in his hometown. They are just one more reminder that Calum is an imposter in all possible ways. He pretended that he and Michael were in love, and he pretended like he fit in amongst the rich and noble, and he pretended like he owned a pair of shoes that cost more than a tank of gas.

In his old, holey t-shirt and his plaid pajama pants with the tear along the bottom of the inseam of the right leg, Calum feels ten times more authentic—more _real_ —than he has all day. He climbs into bed. It isn’t even midnight yet. Downstairs, the party goes on, but he can’t hear it all the way through the stone floors of the palace up to his room.

The sheets are soft as clouds against Calum’s skin. They are easily the nicest, most expensive sheets he has ever slept upon in his life, and he will miss them tomorrow night when he goes back to sleep in his hand-me-down dorm bedding. Sure, the sheets he had gotten from Luke’s eldest brother are soft with wear, well-used and even more well-loved, but there is something heavenly about finely made sheets.

Calum sighs and stares up at the dark ceiling. He must be the most pathetic person here at the palace right now, wallowing in self-pity and waxing poetic about the borrowed dress clothes and the nice sheets. Really, he should be appreciating everything that has happened over the past couple of weeks. He is sleeping in the royal palace, in one of the rooms that belongs to the crown prince, no less, and he has spent the past two weeks knocking elbows with the royal family—and they have treated him as their own. The king, the queen, Michael, and the ward, Ashton, had welcomed Calum into their home with open arms, like he has spent every winter break here for years on end.

A knock on the door interrupts Calum’s attempts to talk himself out of his pity party. Calum nearly jumps at the sound. Nobody should be up here. Even the palace staff are downstairs partaking in the New Year’s celebration.

Calum walks barefoot in his ratty, old pajamas to the door. The king himself could be on the other side, and Calum’s mother is probably rolling in her grave right now at the possibility that Calum is greeting His Majesty in an old band t-shirt. Of course, the chances of the king being on the other side of the door is about the same as Michael actually loving Calum like the whole world thinks, so Calum is probably safe to greet whoever it is in his threadbare pajamas.

As it turns out, it isn’t the king at the door, but it’s pretty damn close to being.

“Saw you sneak out of the party,” greets Michael, the crown prince now beloved by all thanks to Calum.

Michael has sparkling green eyes and light, sand colored hair. He is dressed in his royal best, in a burning shade of red complimented by a dazzling shade of gold. Just by the looks of him, Calum’s breath catches in his throat.

Michael shoulders past Calum into the room.

“Knew wherever you’d be would be ten times better than the sideshow down there.”

He flops onto Calum’s bed, spread out like a starfish, careless that his pristinely pressed clothes are now wrinkling. He grins over at Calum, who still stands in the doorway, and he looks vaguely like a cat coming back home from a successful hunt.

“Tracked you down like a real detective, I did.”

Calum shuts the door. His heart pounds in his chest, louder than anything he has ever heard, and Calum wonders if Michael can hear it all the way across the room, too. He draws in a readying breath, letting it out like it is fire in his lungs. Then he walks ever-so-calmly across the room to set on the edge of his bed. As soon as he sits down, he knows it to be the stupidest place to have picked. Michael cranes his head to look up at him, and maybe the real stars are those that hung in the night sky, but Calum swears he can see them in Michael’s eyes, hanging there, captivating in their enthralling power.

“Wasn’t that hard to figure out, was it?” points out Calum, falling into their old banter like jumping headfirst into a lake, familiar and comforting and exhilarating all at once. “This is probably the only place I know how to get to in the entire palace—except, of course, the kitchen.”

That isn’t true anymore. The first few days, Calum had learned how to move from his guest room to Michael’s bedroom and the table down in the royal suite where they all ate their meals and the library that housed more books than the public library of Calum’s hometown. By now, he was pretty sure he could walk almost the entire palace without getting lost once. As a mere guest of the royal family, of the crown at that, there were areas of the palace that he could not traverse.

But Michael laughs, just like Calum knew he would, and the exaggeration is worth it.

“I saw you talking to Ashton,” says Michael. His laughter leaves his voice by the word until he is somber, serious. “And I gotta know: what is it that he said to make you leave like that?”

A lump rises in the back of Calum’s throat. He swallows around it. He doesn’t like lying to Michael, except that Calum feels like that is all he has done lately. He lied to Michael that this whole charade—pretending to date—wouldn’t affect their friendship. He lied to Michael that he didn’t mind that the whole world believed them to be dating when they were really only friends. And he has been lying to Michael that he doesn’t love him when he really, really does.

The lies taste like acid across Calum’s throat. He is afraid that maybe, when this is all over, he won’t be able to taste anything else for the rest of his life.

“Ah, you know Ashton. He still thinks this whole thing—” Calum gestured between Michael and himself, as if Michael didn’t know exactly what _this_ _whole thing_ was about— “is the stupidest thing we could have ever done, and I told him to mind his own business.”

Somewhere deep down inside of himself, in that place that Calum files away all the painful, unbecoming truths, Calum knows that Ashton has been right this whole time. Pretending to date Michael, the crown prince, while he was head over heels in love with him easily tops the list of the most stupid things Calum has ever done.

And that is saying something, because there are some other seriously viable contenders, such as the time Calum stole his aunt’s car and drove halfway across the country to watch his favorite band play live or the time Calum thought it would be a totally okay to swing from the old rope hanging on the edge of the tributary to the lake back home when really the thing was so ancient that it would have broken with the slightest tug. The first had landed him in jail for a night then had gotten him grounded for six months, which, coincidentally, was exactly how much longer he ended up living with that aunt. The second had ended when the rope snapped halfway through Calum’s grand swing into the lake, and he had flown fifteen feet through the air to smack his head against the mossy side of the big river rocks, and he had spent a week unconscious following it.

“Ashton’s a good one to talk,” says Michael, rolling his eyes. “He’s the one who is betrothed and still fawning over Luke like he can actually do anything about it.”

Calum winces at the reminder, and his mind flashes to Luke, and he shuts down all trains of thought right there, because there are some things better off left alone where they are, not to be dredged up for no good reason.

“So, if you think about it, Ashton isn’t real good at making life decisions, either.”

Calum’s breath catches but for an entirely different reason than earlier.

“You think us dating is a stupid idea then?”

“I think you were right. Ashton should keep his nose out of our business,” says Michael.

It isn’t an answer to Calum’s question, but Calum doesn’t know if he is brave enough to ask again, not with the way Michael sits up in the bed, obviously creating distance between them. Calum can feel the empty space like it were a toothache, painful and throbbing and impossible to ignore.

Distantly, Calum can hear the bells ringing, the first warnings of the new year approaching. He has never heard them before in person, but he knows them by their sounds. He has watched them on the television every year since he can remember, curled up somewhere with a mug of hot cocoa, anticipation bubbling beneath his fingertips as the countdown to a brand new year begins at 60.

It is almost midnight.  

Calum counts the passing seconds alongside his heartbeat, careless that they aren’t in sync. The bells right out every fifteen until the countdown hits the single digits, then it rings every second.

_Nine._

_Eight._

_Seven._

_Six._

_Five._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two._

_One_.

Fireworks explode in the air, high up in the night sky, dousing the world in light for flashes at a time. They boom and shake the windows in their panes. Calum watches the colors flash red and blue and golden, and, somewhere in the place inside of him where he files away the painful, unbecoming truths, Calum wonders if this coming year will be just as stressful, just as difficult, just as _heartbreaking_ as the one they have left behind.

He thinks about asking Michael, because important philosophical questions such as that deserve to shared, especially in the darkness of night. But he doesn’t. When he turns his head to speak with Michael, turning his attention from the fireworks through the window to Michael instead, the question is stolen right from the tip of his tongue.

Michael lurches forward on the bed and crashes his lips against Calum’s, and there isn’t a single soul in the entire room Michael has anything to prove to, but, _damn_ , do Michael’s lips feel like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I plotted this thing as a full-blown chaptered story that covered from the beginning to this point and beyond, but this chapter ended so well as a standalone that I just left it. One day, I may write more, but, for now, I'm marking it as complete.
> 
> Hope you liked it. ♥


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